Fund raisers might want to send a note of apology to Frank Dickerson.

Mr. Dickerson, as part of his doctoral studies at Claremont Graduate University, in California, recently analyzed more than 1.5 million words of online and printed fund-raising texts to determine how effectively fund raisers communicate with their audiences.

While his findings were enough to fuel the creation of a 350-page dissertation, his thesis can be boiled down to a few short words: Most fund-raising copy stinks.

Mr. Dickerson used a computer-based analysis to perform what he calls a “linguistic MRI” on the language in fund-raising materials from 880 nonprofit organizations.

The analysis found that fund raisers typically appeal to potential donors in language that is less engaging than what readers are accustomed to in academic prose and government documents.

“Fund-raising texts sounded cold and detached like doctoral dissertations rather than warm and friendly like personal conversations,” Mr. Dickerson writes. “Rather than gaining reader attention with emotionally rich human-interest stories, these texts contained less narrative than academic prose.”

In other words, Mr. Dickerson and his computer were forced to deal with thousands of pages of really boring material.

Fund-raisers, he writes, need to focus more effort on telling effective stories if they want their prose to be more persuasive.

“For a fund raiser, the weight of raising money rests squarely on the power of words. Yes, there are those occasions when a person visits a charity, or sees a video about its work,” he writes. “But most potential donors decide to give based on what they read. And unfortunately, what they read is usually not that good.”

Prospecting gives fund raisers the opportunity to have their peers offer advice on their fund-raising appeals. To have your letter critiqued, e-mail us.